This may be a sign of how iPhone demand is faring amongst the competition

The latest iPhone may not be the rockstar Apple thought it would be. The Cupertino, California-based company slashed its orders for iPhone 5 screens by about 50 percent for the first quarter of 2013, and cut orders for other iPhone components as well.

This may be a sign of how iPhone demand is faring amongst the competition. Rival hardware makers like Samsung, whose devices are coupled with Google's Android operating system, have stolen much of the smartphone market share in the U.S.

For Q3 2012, Android was the No. 1 mobile operating system with a market share of 72.4 percent (compared to 52.5 percent in Q3 2011). Apple's iOS followed far behind at 13.9 percent (compared to 15 percent in Q3 2011).

As far as hardware goes, Samsung led the Q3 2012 market share at 22.9 percent (compared to 18.7 percent in Q3 2011) and Apple sat in third place at 5.5 percent (compared to 3.9 percent in Q3 2011).

Apple recently slipped behind in China's smartphone market as well. Apple, which previously held the No. 4 spot in the Chinese mobile phone market, slipped to No. 6 in Q3 2012 due to its low number of shipments, according to research firm IDC. Out of China's 60 million mobile phone shipments in Q3, Apple's iPhone accounted for less than 10 percent.

Apple's iPhone 5 was released in September 2012 with new features like a 4-inch screen and 4G LTE connectivity. It's available in either black or white, and is priced at $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model, and $399 for the 64GB model with two-year contracts.

The screens aren't better! "Higher resolution" Pentile screens that have fewer sub-pixels than a proper "lower" res display and terrible color profiles are not superior!

Also, the only reason it is "higher" res is that it is physically larger, but again, Pentile displays cheat using fewer subpixels so there are all kinds of associated artifacts and things like small text rendering blurry.

And yes, I find the talk of "superior" displays irritating, just as I find people bragging about 27" 1080p TN displays bragging about their crap monitor being "better" than a smaller IPS display simply because it is bigger.

A Pentile display with bad color profiles and faked "high" resolution is not better than what is in the iPhone by any objective measure. Sorry.

It has a faster CPU by a wide margin as well, but I guess you don't find nearly double the browsermark score to be important at all...

As for faster Voice Search, again, it's on the iPhone. Google's Voice Search and Maps applications are currently faster with better UIs than what is on JB. Strange, yes, but not that odd given that Google makes more income from iOS than Android. Don't worry though, it'll catch up. Maybe the hardware from other OEMs will catch up someday as well.

And as far as UI goes, I use both and I don't see the big deal. Taking up your whole screen with widgets is highly personal. If you like it then great, but it is far from a dealbreaker. A bigger problem is that responsiveness and smoothness with JB is still second rate compared to iOS or WP7/8. There is still chop when scrolling pages and photos, you figured they'd have brought it up to snuff by now.

iOS may look "old" on the surface but under the hood it is a well oiled machine, and of course it is still the #1 platform for quality apps.

Windows 7 is technically "old", most of its UI elements date back to 1995, but I don't care about flash as long as it works well, I care about running applications!

And because I know you'll bring up games, note that they only make up about 20% of app downloads.

Why are your concerns so superficial and gimmicky? It makes sense given that the GS3 is an overpriced toy, but still...

NFC - Its the same situation as LTE: Wait until it works properly. Apple waited for LTE tech to catch up with their requirements, so instead of cutting the 4S battery life in half from the iPhone 4 by adopting LTE early they instead doubled the LTE battery life over almost every other phone out there.

It is a similar situation with NFC, right now it is an easy vector for malware and theft. I know Android is a platform used to being full of security holes, so much so that even the Google Play store is crawling with it, so much so that the best way to remote wipe is from a malicious hack and not from the legitimate owner, but that won't fly elsewhere. Apple will probably make its move once NFC protocols move forward from the ancient and insecure state its in now.

HDMI - Beaming video to an HDTV over wifi is better. Why clutter up your phone with more useless ports? Its just an excuse to increase chassis size beyond what is ergonomically feasible for most (7" phones for 2014!).

MicroUSB - I have one device with MicroUSB, a Kindle, and it is trash. It is even more fragile than HDMI, just the worst physical connector out there. I wish the Kindle used a Lightning connector, that thing is durable as hell and plugs in either orientation, but unfortunately it belongs only to Apple.

1st, who said pentile? You cant compare that, we arent talking about the S3 you love to use. Any 5 inch 1080p screen from TODAYS smarphones smokes your little iPyoon. #1, because its bigger, #2, because its MUCH higher res and DPI.

As for the rest. Yes, again, when you cherry pick benchmarks and one by one eliminate the MANY MANY MANY features that the iPhone is missing, then it does come out on top.

I can play like you too though. If you like to play games and appreciate playing them on a tiny little screen, then the iPhone is a good phone for you.